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TRIBUTARY -“An exploration of the Missouri River, real and metaphorical” was a month-long deep-dive series of exhibits and programs sponsored primarily* by KC’s amazing Charlotte Street Foundation with hydrologist Don Wilkison (aka M.O.I. – The Minister of Information) as chief organizer/curator. Artists and scientists presented contemporary art, current scientific research, interactive natural resource workshops and big river adventures to build understanding and appreciation of our nearby very long, complex and valuable natural resource, the Missouri River. It was an inspiring reminder of the value of collaboration across disciplines where parallel mingling of artistic and scientific approaches to problem solving include observation, experience, and intuition.

My contribution included…………

Drops in Petri Dishes, 2012-2017, Glass, acrylic, paper vellum, pencil, ink…(c) The dishes are numbered with a hand-engraving tool. There were 55 “Drops” displayed on a white-topped desk-height table, near the broad south-facing front windows of La Esquina Gallery.

Drops in Petri Dishes represents actual places around the world where water meets land, and are “collected” in many cases from places where there is an issue such as water quality, water scarcity, or flooding. There are a few rare “drops” from places where there actually no longer is water, usually because of diversion, drought, or lack of snow-melt.

I’m continuing to add to this collection periodically with no end in sight currently. To date I have collected 125 drops.

To be clear…the collecting/finding part is fiction. “Find” means “make” though I sometimes “find” news stories which, eventually lead to a new Drop. The places depicted and abstracted are real, based on satellite mapping. I started making the drops in 2012, the petri dishes came later…the perfect frame, storage and metaphor.

I have the potential for lots of puddles in my flat files!!

*with additional funding support from Missouri Arts Council and ARTSKC.

Every curvy edge represents a place where water meets land on the surface of our earth. These approximately one hundred pieces of printed archival paper, cut into the shapes of the rivers and surrounding land forms, previously printed as complete images, now connect to each other to form branches, veins, tributaries, as you wish.Detail of my first ever wall installation! (There are five separate pieces within the foreground arched branch.)

Artists do these weird things. Like fiddle with what they’ve already done. (Also called “revisiting.”) What was “done,” work completed, can be undone or extended and amplified. That’s what happened with this collection and it was so much fun! The history is convoluted, much like a river…

Several years ago, I did these oil paintings of actual river paths – from satellite perspective, our contemporary version of landscape(?). (one body of work.) Later I realized that taking photos across the surface of those oil paintings, from a low angle, and cropping them tightly, revealed curves and perspectives that were so appealing!…as if looking at our world from an airplane or mountain top. I can relate to that. (another body of work.) More recently I pulled one full set (40+) of the archival pigment prints of those photos, along with proofs, along with my X-acto knife, and started isolating the rivers and land depicted in the prints into pieces and parts. Moving these new shapes around, stacking, shifting, and pondering, over and over, I teased the designs into this new body of work which I’ve called “Paper Rivers.” So, these still represent the paths of actual rivers and chunks of land on the skin of our earth, but mashed up a little…or a lot…maybe akin to some of the things we humans do to our natural world.

Near the Missouri River, in the historic Columbus Park neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri, you will find a cluster of galleries open on third Fridays…now including, the new GILLIS GALLERY, 1029 East 5th Street, which opens with “Paper Rivers” on Friday, May 19th! … and You Are invited!!

Brooklyn’s 440 Gallery is now featuring a juried national exhibition, entitled “Personal is political is personal.”

I’m thrilled to be a part of this with Four Cups, shown above.

Thanks to juror, Sue Coe, for including me in this intriguing and powerful collection of work. The show title caught my interest immediately. I designed Four Cups specifically in response to the call for entries, wishing to capture in a simple, direct way my deep concern for the state of water, ultimately our most precious resource, and the focus of my current work!

For those walking along Baltimore in downtown Kansas City, the poster for my Waterplaces exhibition may have looked like this…depending on the time of day, the reflections from the city, and the light on of those stunning lime green accents within the Kansas City Design Center. KCDC is home base to an academic program for graduate architecture, urban design and landscape design students, ready to tackle real-world projects…and with a constant underpinning of sustainability. Our interests overlapped beautifully!

Several years in the making, I’m excited to share the following information about the exhibition of my 100 small works on vellum reflecting “waterplaces” around the world… and very happy and honored to have received funding from ArtsKC – Regional Arts Council to help support this event!!